


we're all dead in devil town

by Princex_N



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Disorganized Speech, Entry 74, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Mental Health Issues, Reunions, Season/Series 03, Teambuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25366372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Jay is still recovering from his months of catatonia, Tim's still trying to convince him to go to a doctor, and the unexpected guest at their motel door certainly isn't making things any easier.
Relationships: Brian & Timothy "Tim" W., Jay Merrick & Timothy "Tim" Wright
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	we're all dead in devil town

**Author's Note:**

> title from [cavetown's song Devil Town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvaxYUfGHnk)
> 
> tracking down the amount of time between every tape and entry is such a pain in the ass guys, but i Do seem to love it. This particular fic is set right around the upload date of Entry #74.

Tim and Jay don't tend towards a lot of conversation when they have downtime. Tim's a little less than interested most days, and Jay has never been good at keeping small talk going - even when he had a life outside of chasing an old shitty college director and being chased by a supernatural horror and some creep in a hood. 

The silence works for them. Gives them space to decompress after a day of driving and searching and filming through whatever vague terror the hours had been filled with. Space to breathe and almost relax. 

Whatever thin chatter they had managed to string together dies the moment they hear the heavy thud at the motel door. 

They look at each other for a thick moment, bodies still and tense while they wait for more, but the silence just drags on. 

"Did you call someone?" Tim asks hesitantly, finally, and manages to find the casual space to roll his eyes at the thoroughly unimpressed look Jay gives him for asking. 

"Who would _I_ have to call?" he demands in a strained hiss, which frankly, _is_ fair. "That wasn't a knock anyway," he continues, already picking his way to his feet and closer to the door. It hasn't been long since he'd been completely catatonic, and Tim is still fruitlessly trying to convince him to go to a doctor, but at least he's feeling good enough to start making dumb decisions again. 

It's a strange thing to be grateful for, but Jay is a strange man. 

(To be fair, though, Tim probably is too.) 

"I don't see anyone out there," Jay says, peering uncertainly through the peephole in the door. "There might be something on the ground though." 

Tim barely has time to process that before Jay is groping for the camera perched on the TV stand and is heading straight for the locks. 

"You're just opening it?" Tim barks, scrambling to his feet to look for something that could pass as a weapon (one advantage the abandoned buildings have over the hotels is the surplus of rusted pipes and forgotten tools that carry a decent weight to them. The thought of them makes the back of Tim's skull and his knee ache with phantom pains he doesn't actually have memories of, but it's better than going empty-handed). 

"Yeah?" Jay replies, as if it's obvious and Tim's the moronic one for questioning it, he's already poking the camera lens through the cracked entrance. It's like it's never even occurred to him that someone could be laying a trap he's walking directly into, but there's no sense of superiority when Tim sees Jay stiffen and say, "Uh, Tim," in a little strained voice, e just leaps forward to rise on his toes in order to look over Jay's shoulder. 

The hood is easy to recognize. It takes Tim a moment longer to piece together that the limp sprawl of it on the doorstep means the man wearing it is probably unconscious. 

"Christ," Tim sneers, nudging the door open a little wider, still braced to shove the man and Jay in opposite directions at the first sign of any sudden movements. He reaches out to kick the man lightly in the ribs. He doesn't get a response. "Well," he says vaguely, not quite sure what to do with that. "Should we just... leave him out there?" 

He turns to catch Jay's eyes (making sure to keep the man firmly in his line of sight) and waits for a response. Tim might have invited himself along on this expedition and takes control when he has to, but the whole thing is still and always has been Jay's first and foremost. 

"No," Jay says slowly. "I don't know why he's here, but if we have a chance to get some answers, we might as well take it." He follows it up with a grimace, "Plus, I don't think leaving him out here is going to be great for the whole 'avoiding getting attention' thing." 

Tim doesn't love the idea. It feels like inviting trouble in with open arms, and knowing what this guy has been up to lately doesn't make it feel any safer. But... Tim has still been leaving bottles of his medication at home even though he's known it's been getting stolen for almost a year now. But, some nameless part of Tim rebels at the thought of leaving this man to die on the curb. Tim doesn't get it, isn't quite sure he wants to understand, but it's easy to go along with it and pretend he's only doing it because Jay made the decision. 

He still does the bulk of the lifting, because Jay is built like a twig and is about as helpful, but they manage it. Haul the hooded man onto the bed Tim had claimed, and after a moment of hesitation, Tim pulls off his belt and loops it to tie the man's hands together. It won't stop him from running off, but hopefully it'll be enough to keep him from throwing a decent punch the moment he's conscious enough to take the opportunity. 

"We should take the hood off," Tim says, not quite questioning, and Jay nods in agreement, but they both hesitate. It feels wrong, off-limits somehow. The side of Tim's face hurts like being ground into debris and cement, but that wasn't him (or if it was, he doesn't actually remember it). He tells himself that they need to know, deserve it for the shit this guy has been putting them through for years, and pulls it back despite the odd reluctance. 

Then he almost wishes he hadn't. 

"Brian?" he asks incredulously, the name half-punched out of him, because that can't be right, right? Brian had left. Realized that Tim was damaged and even more damaging and had gotten out clean before Tim could ruin it all himself, right? Moved out and moved on and was doing fine, _right?_

But apparently not. Apparently he's been hiding under this hood, looking gaunt and unshaven, dirt and dried blood smeared over his hollow cheeks, fresh blood dripping from his nose and hairline, heavy bags under his eyes and a ring of new bruises strung tight around his throat. Heavy and heady and holy. 

This isn't how things were meant to be. 

"Of course it's him," Jay mutters, sounding more annoyed than shocked, and he shrugs defensively when Tim's bewildered gaze turns on him. "Well, who else would it be? Seth?" 

Tim manages to fumble some humor through the shock and nonsense to joke, "He'd hated Alex enough back then," and then halts, because Brian hadn't. Brian hadn't hated Alex at all - they had been best friends. 

He'd known that from the start. Brian had been Tim's best friend (first, only), but Alex had always been Brian's. The whole reason Tim had agreed to work on that dumb film in the first place was because Brian had begged him over dinner that night - said that Alex had been working on that godawful script since before they were freshmen and that empty sign-up sheet couldn't bring it all to a halt. That script wasn't good enough to convince anyone. Tim had agreed because Brian had asked and that was it, he probably hadn't even been the only one. 

But Tim has been watching those cryptic videos, static burning code into the backs of his eyes. The hooded man hates Alex, can't stand him, wants him dead, wants to kill Alex himself. Tim can't reconcile that with what Brian had been like. 

Then again, Tim and Alex had gotten along back then too, hadn't they? 

"Jesus Christ," Tim sighs out, halfway between cursing and praying, dragging his hands through his hair and forcing himself to take a mental step back, take a deep breath, clear the mirrors out of his head. Brian looks hurt, it's probably bad if he'd passed out on their doorstep. Tim has kept a first aid kit in his backpack since he was in college and hasn't stopped since, always within arm's reach. 

Part of him is protesting that he should be angry, should be rabid and betrayed and torn apart, seeking revenge instead of a way to care, but he ignores it. Tim's always been a little too scraped empty to be mad at other people. 

(Has always been a little too mad at himself to be angry at others.)

He turns on his heel and goes to dig for the kit, comes back to find Jay rifling through the man's pockets. It doesn't net him much - a camera and a bottle of Tim's pills, already mostly empty, a dirty bag of trail mix and a couple of loose tapes, but the camera gives Jay something to do while Tim sits on the edge of the bed to do some clumsy first aid. 

It feels weird, doing this for someone else. Tim is well-acquainted with the motions of cleansing wounds, bare feet torn open on forest floors and skin split open from unexpected falls. Seizures have ended in concussions more times than Tim would like to admit (Tim has lived alone since he left the hospital, he likes the quiet, but he's spent years too tired to get around to anchoring his furniture right and the religiously kept schedule for medications can only do so much when there's no one around to help catch you when your body gives out). He likes to think he has enough experience to at least be able to tell if they need to start worrying about a hospital trip. 

Brian doesn't stir when Tim cleans his face, even though there's rash and scrapes and scars under the layers of dirt and blood on his skin. Tim hasn't spent much time thinking about the hooded man outside of the confused frustration of their brief encounters, but now he finds himself wondering where the last place Brian had to wash his face was. Wonders what he's been eating, where he's been sleeping. Did the parts of Tim he can't remember being ever help him? Did they talk? Did they protect each other? 

"Alex was the one who attacked him," Jay's voice startles him as Tim searches through Brian's greasy hair for bumps and cuts. "The hooded - Brian - got him out of your house, it looks like, and got him tied up somewhere else. Then Alex managed to get out and surprise him." 

They've been beating the shit out of each other for a good couple of years now, so Tim can't find himself surprised. Some part of him still bares its teeth when he finds the dried blood in Brian's hair, caked thick on the back of his head. 

He makes sure the wound isn't still bleeding, cleans out some of the blood from the dirty brown strands, and cleans the dirt out of the ragged wound as best as he can. Wishes he'd brought along his old bruise salve for the marks on Brian's neck - he doesn't let his fingers stray close to it, but he knows they'll be handprints when they finish forming. 

(Jay had been gifted twin marks last year, matching hands that were Tim's but aren't. Tim hated seeing them, but Jay never flinches when he looks back at him. Tim doesn't have the bruise salve because Jay is always around these days, and Tim's legs still crumple and his brain still fuzzes into static sometimes between doses, but Jay has never let Tim hit the ground hard even though he's too skinny to do anything more than slow the decent. Jay keeps people away, prevents well-meaning strangers from calling an ambulance and leaving Tim with the bills, his camera's always running but Tim's never found the footage in his entries. It's a lot to think about. Tim usually tries not to.) 

It's not until Tim is pressing his hands along Brian's sides - ignoring the soft swell of breath under his palms as he searches for damp patches of blood or the soft shift of bone - that Brian stirs. The corner of his mouth lifts to bare his teeth in a snarl, his eyes snapping open at the realization that his hood is off and his hands are tied. He snarls audibly at that, a ragged animal noise ground through gritted teeth as he struggles hard enough that he'll be giving himself bruises for sure. 

"Knock it off," Tim snaps, somewhere between the same angry growl as this new Brian and their old college teasing, off-balance and uncertain. Brian bares his teeth again, but does stop trying to break his own wrists. The creepy mask is still on the bed; Tim nudges it towards him and doesn't stop Brian from snatching it up. 

"Why'd you come here?" Jay asks. His hands are empty, but Tim doesn't miss the red light on the camera in his lap, and he doubts Brian does either. 

Tim's not surprised when Brian doesn't answer, but that doesn't stop some distant part of him from being disappointed. (He can't tell if it's his or not. He thinks it might be both.)

Brian doesn't answer, but he does sneer, filthy nails digging into the fabric of his mask. None of this feels quite _real_ and Tim digs his teeth into his tongue to force his brain to focus, to keep everything from sliding apart and out of focus. He doesn't run his tongue over his teeth, but he wants to; half-believing they'll taste like blood, fit wrong in his mouth, too sharp and wrong and not quite the right shape. 

"Do you want some water?" Tim blurts out, trying to think about anything other than dog teeth and rabid snarls. Both Brian and Jay give him a mix of disbelieving and irritated looks, but Tim jerks his head at the bruises around Brian's neck and the sluggish shift of his skin and doesn't take it back. 

Finally Brian's head twitches, not really a _nod_ , but Tim will take it. He heads for the cabinets, but after a moment redirects to the plastic bottles in the fridge (glass is a weapon and open containers are a risk, Tim can't tell if he's trying to pander towards Brian's paranoia or indulge in his own and resolves not to think about it). He doubts Brian will be able to twist the cap right with his hands tied, so he walks back and opens it for him (close enough for Brian to hear the seal breaking) before handing it over. 

He drinks quickly. Tim can't tell if it's just the dehydration egging him on or if he's afraid one of them will take the water from him. Some part of him wants to warn Brian to drink it slower, but the other half is thinking about starving dogs who will bite if you try to touch their bowls. He keeps his mouth shut, hands clenching at his sides for something to do. 

Brian's eyes catch the movement, unblinking and studying for a long moment. It's almost unnerving (it's almost comforting). One of his hands shifts from the water bottle to flicker through a series of movements that feel familiar, but that Tim can't place. He shrugs apologetically and Brian's calculating stare dissolves into a snarl of frustration. 

"Why'd you come _here_?" Jay tries again as Brian finishes off the water. He wipes at the rivulets at the corners of his mouth with the ragged ends of the hoodie sleeves, tucks the plastic bottle into the pocket at the front, scratches at the scruff of his jaw, teeth exposed almost idly as his eyes roam the room - looking for something Tim can't grasp yet. He gestures at his camera and the tapes he'd had on him, but Jay doesn't offer them back - he's been weirdly protective of that shit from the start, and Tim's not surprised that he's already added Brian's to his hoard. 

Brian doesn't look surprised either, but the frustration on his face only seems to grow. The silence starts to feel more like a reluctance to speak than a reluctance to answer, and Tim doesn't know what that means - whether it's the bruises around his throat or something deeper - but he's not quite stupid or trusting enough to untie him for a pen and a notepad. 

"Did Alex follow you at least?" Jay relents finally, and Brian bristles at the name and shakes his head firmly. His hands twist in the belt, fingers coming together and then falling apart. Tim doesn't understand it, but he does recognize it as ASL at least (a nurse at the hospital had been teaching him once, right? He doesn't remember any of the lessons. The not-quite-hopeful look Brian gives him makes him wonder if some Other part of him does). 

Finally, Brian rubs at his face, the heels of his palms digging into his cheekbones, fingers curling harshly over his eyes like cages. 

"There was a plan," he says into his hands. His voice is not quite as Tim remembers, a ragged rasping undertone that's fresh and bleeding, like old scars torn open, and the words shape in his mouth like they're no longer used to being there. "Flaws and desperation. He got out of the chains, the ch-the _ropes_." He shrugs. "The forest's safety is limited."

None of it quite makes sense. It does, but the words are a little too strangely strung together. Tim recognizes it, but not from Brian's mouth. But, it's not quite far off from flashing code and vibrating static, maybe it's not as new as it sounds. 

Tim should be angry. Should feel betrayed, rabid, used, torn apart. Brian has been stealing his medication, breaking into his house, filming seizures and leafing through medical records. Tim should be _angry_ , just like Brian has claimed to be. 

Instead he's thinking of ways to convince Brian to see a doctor the same way he's been trying to convince Jay, concern and empathy coiling at the base of his throat and aching. 

Sometimes Tim thinks his life might be a lot easier if he didn't take up every opportunity to help someone else. 

(Splitting headaches and aching loneliness and locked doors and silent phones. Tim's been left alone far too many times to ever think about doing it to someone else.) 

"Are you okay?" he asks, even though he already knows the answers. 

Brian looks at him, silent and long, then erupts into laughter that sounds wounded and angry and grieving all at once. "No," he says, giggling faintly around the word. Tim can see his teeth tearing open the inside of his cheek, blood staining his tongue. "But there is no rest. I am the one who can see it all, I keep all the pieces moving, and the pieces _must_ be moving, so I have to control them. Not a lamb and not a wolf. Sacrificed, shepherd, shackled, shadowed." His hands spread helplessly, as much as they can still bound at the wrist, Tim bites back the impulse to untie them. 

He shares an uncertain look with Jay, not sure what that means or how to respond. There's not a lot to do with something like that, especially since Tim's not entirely sure if they had any plan in the first place. 

"Why control them?" Jay asks finally. "Why the stupid videos instead of just coming here to actually talk to us?" 

His lip curls, but Tim can't tell if Brian is supposed to look sad or angry. "The distance is safety, protection, interference," he says. He jerks his head at Tim, "Not all of us have freedom and choice." 

Tim snorts at that. "Why not? Considering I can't even remember what I'm doing when I wore that mask, most people might consider you safer than me." 

It earns him an eye-roll, but Tim's got enough experience dealing with sarcastic attitudes to brush it off. Brian's next move of cupping his hands in front of his face, then separating them as far as his wrists allow, is a little less familiar. "They're not you," he says, tone flat and defensive. He doesn't add anything else, which isn't helpful because Tim doesn't know what to say to that.

"Have you known that since college?" Jay asks instead. Good to know he's at least nosy enough to keep a conversation going. 

Brian looks at them for a moment, blinking sluggishly and silent. "We were attacked in the hospital. 56. 51," he says, speaking slowly, like he's feeling each word out in a way that is familiar as much as it's different. "I was lost, and I escaped, but Alex was already gone and no one else remembered. I found them in the woods. We knew. They taught me to speak. I led the pack." 

Tim chews on his cheek. "You never said anything," he says finally, not sure if it's an accusation or a regret. 

The look he gets as Brian focuses on him again is just as uncertain in the same way. "You had a job. You finished college. You moved on. I was stuck, and broken. There was no need for you-," he cuts himself off sharply, leaving it almost an insult, turning away to stare at the opposite wall. Tim is pretty sure an insult was meant, but it wasn't directed at him. 

"What about the start? Why split us off into different groups? If you hate Alex so much, you might have gotten further with a unified front." 

Brian's teeth flash again, but it looks more uncertain than threatening. Tim doesn't know how long Brian's been this much of a mess, but he can't help but wonder if the thought had never even occurred to him. If the idea of trusting someone else had been so foreign it was never considered in the first place. There had been him - or whoever else is living in his brain alongside him - but he's never exactly look coordinated in those tapes; if control is what Brian had been after, they might have been different for how easy they were. Jay isn't always the smartest either, necessarily, but he's way too stubborn to just listen without question. 

(Sometimes it can almost be funny to listen to him snap and quip back at Alex during those times they'd 'worked together', up until Tim has to reconsider the fact that Alex had already nearly killed Jay once before, and fraying self-control was the only thing keeping him from doing it again.) 

"Would you have heard?" Brian asks finally, eyes flickering over the computer and hard drives resting on the opposite bed. "His narrative was biased. Unified. It only frayed the more you found." 

Jay bobs his head a little at that, like he's considering. "What about the tape at Tim's house?" he asks, because of course he's still thinking about that. "What does that add?" 

Brian opens his mouth to answer, and maybe it'll be just as confusing an explanation as every other one he's given tonight, but Tim grinds his teeth and squints his eyes to stop him all the same. 

In his defense, he hadn't _known_ who she was when he'd met her. He'd woken up, lost in the middle of the woods again, and had stumbled across her one his way out. She'd been confused and lost and terrified enough to spill her guts onto the shoulder of some stranger just as lost as her, and well, Tim will never claim to be an expert but when he recognizes something he can't help but offer the same solutions that work for him. 

He hadn't known she was any part of this, mostly because he hadn't known that 'this' was a thing at the time. He'd never known there was anything to be involved in until Jay showed back up and acted weird enough that Tim couldn't help but look into it all. He hadn't known about his own involvement in her story until that discovery had paved the way for him to get his hands on something that could actually play the tape he'd discovered tucked among his things weeks earlier. 

Tim doesn't really know what he (or the other part of him) had been doing under that mask, but he can guess what the masked figures had been trying in that tape. Whether his own hand in the situation was a planned component or not, it doesn't change the fact that Tim had completed their goal of getting Jessica out, getting her help, getting her back on the trail to faking normal again. Tim loves Jay, but he _can't_ know, because the moment he does he'll dedicate that one-track mind of his to dragging her right back into the center of it. 

Jay tries his best to help people too. It's not really his fault he's so fucking... clumsy at it. 

It's hard to tell if Brian understands everything that Tim isn't saying, if he knows that she's back at work with her own set of prescriptions and upcoming doctors' appointments or not, if he trusts Tim at all, but he takes the cue anyway. Swallows whatever words he was going to say and meets Jay's eyes with a casual air. 

"Why would I know?" he asks simply, shrugging vaguely. 

Tim tells himself that the noise Jay makes in response isn't funny, that his fixation is probably unhealthy and that the frustration is Tim's fault in the first place, but it doesn't really work. At least it gets a genuine grin out of Brian too. It startles off his face when Tim moves towards him, but the softened look around his eyes when he realizes that Tim is releasing his wrists feels more genuine somehow. 

God only knows what the plan is going to be now, Tim knows his own priority of wrangling the other two into his doctor's office is going to be far from what they prefer, even if he can get them to admit he has a point (though Brian's been on Tim's pills for a while now, he might actually jump at the chance to get his own prescription). But this still counts for something, even if there are still secrets, still things Tim doesn't know but should, still things left unsaid. 

This still counts for something. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this fic you might also like [the fic i wrote where brian/hoodie joins Jay way back in season one!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487508)
> 
> i've written enough fics and dedicated enough brain space to this fandom that i have a pretty detailed timeline riddled with headcanons for everything, if anyone wants to see it i would be More than happy to share it; if you have any questions about how characterization or smthn don't hesitate to ask!!!
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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